If you’ve missed out on German developer Ascaron’s Patrician II then Patrician III might be a game you should consider. As a Northern European trader you have a choice of several medieval port towns spread around the Baltic Sea. With your ship, crew and some gold in your pockets you go about hauling goods from one location to another, carefully establishing a mercantile empire and, with enough riches and power, finally reach the position of Alderman in your home town.

You can almost feel a Zen-like quality in the trading. Prices rise or fall according to consumption and availability, with competing shipping companies pulling their own weight in the trading game and potentially interfering in your own money-making ventures. With enough capital and fame you can even establish yourself in foreign cities, building your own shops and warehouses and producing goods locally.

So why the low score? Essentially there aren’t that many changes. On its best days this is Patrician II Gold, with new weather effects, some minor interface changes, a map editor and an option to send goods over land by caravan to nearby towns. That’s it, and although Patrician III overall is a superior trading sim, it’s much too similar to its predecessor for it to be passed off as a proper sequel.

System Requirements: Pentium II 233 MHz, 32 MB RAM, 56o MB HDD, Win95

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